INTRODUCTION

You wake up in total darkness. All that you can hear is wind screaming through unseen trees. Who am I? Where am I?  What am I?  Momentary confusion overwhelms you, before the pain sets in. The pain completely overpowers your being: it dominates your consciousness; it cries out throughout your body and it tortures your mind.

Then you realise: it’s not a pain, it’s a hunger. A hunger - for blood.

You slowly stand up and curse your brothers. Only they could’ve made such a mess of murdering their eldest sibling. Recognising you as the strongest and most powerful of the litter, the runts stabbed you in the back but markedly didn’t finish the job. They will suffer for keeping you alive - or keeping you dead, you chuckle. You will torture them, plague them and hunt them down. You will destroy them.

But first: to sate the insatiable hunger; the gnawing, voracious, unquenchable hunger for blood. You reach down deep inside your mind and feel the animal inside. Your teeth grow, your hairs multiply and swarm round your body like insects and claws burst out of your fingertips. The transformation is painful, but pain is good. You embrace pain, and soon your brothers will have to endure agony. You smile at the thought.

As a wolf, it is easy to pick up the scent of a puny human. You power along the murky, dead landscape towards the odour like a moth drawn to light. Behind a cluster of knotted trees sits a Dwarf. Stalking towards your prey, you smell his fear. You pause for a moment to appreciate the magnificent aroma. He gathers an axe and shield and tries to put up resistance but he is no match for your pure ferocity. You launch yourself upon him and sink your teeth into his neck, savouring the sweet taste of blood. You drain him dry but your appetite is not sated. You have found through embittered experience it is never sated. Neither will your appetite for power be until your fellow vampiric brothers are screaming for forgiveness.